Welcome back to Gear Daddy, I am host Daddy Troy. This whole week at Dad Labs, we have been talking about baby monitors today in particular I am going to talk about issues that affect privacy and interference, it is time to put you geeks head on because we are going to talk about bandwidth behemoths and modulation mixed ups.
When I tune the radio station in my car in this case 107.1, that 107.1 means something, so 107.1 megahertz that stands for the frequency of that particular radio station who broadcast that. It is reserved by the FCC for radio stations and in this time in particular it reserve for just one radio station.
Most of baby monitors use a technology that similar to FM radio stations, it is called frequency modulation (FM). But the biggest difference here is that baby monitors, they do not have their own set of reserve frequencies. Instead they have to share set of frequencies with other devices. This frequency bands are called ISM (Industrial Scientific and Medical) ISM Bands.
And they are pretty crowded with other devices such as, cordless phones, wireless routers and even microwave ovens. So, any of these might interfere with the baby monitor depending on the frequency of both the monitor as well as the device being used. So before you go out to purchase of a baby monitor, check around your home and see what frequencies your wireless devices are using. Cordless phones use the frequencies 900 megahertz, 2.4 gigahertz and 5.8 gigahertz. Wireless routers used the 2.4 gigahertz band and microwave ovens also use the 2.4 gigahertz band.
Baby monitor is the most commonly come in a following frequencies, 49 megahertz, 900 megahertz, 2.4 gigahertz and 5.8 gigahertz. So of all this talk of megahertz and gigahertz has a little confused, do not worry about it, just go the user manual or the device itself and look at the numbers. This one right here has a 5.8 gigahertz and this one right here has a 900 megahertz. The two do not match so there less likely to interfere.
A lot of wireless devices can transmit over hundreds feet, it been sometime with interference that you hear on your baby monitor, it is coming from the neighbors next door and this can be especially problematic if they have a baby and they are using a baby monitor that has the same frequency as your baby monitor.
The way you get around is that a lot of baby monitors have this little AB switch in the middle that allows you to switch between two channels. If privacy is super important to you, realize that a lot of baby monitor manufacturers will put private or privacy on their box and all that really means is they have multiple channels that allows you to switch among them and have more privacy in your conversations with your baby.
So far I have been talking about analog monitors but if you really concerned with interference and/or privacies is best to go with a digital monitor and you going to pay for this added feature but it might be worth it to you. Digital monitors are less susceptible to interference and they make it easier for the engineer who designed it to encode the information, so that they could be truly private.
Now, there is one type of baby monitor, I have not talked about yet, that is one—it is the 1.9 gigahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is a band that is been recently opened up by the FCC, so it is not crowded yet, not a whole lot of devices had been designed to occupy it. So you do not get a whole lot inference and more importantly it is also designs specifically for a voice communication so you do not get a whole of other applications such as the microwave oven interfering with your baby monitor.
Devices that its frequency likes Philips model often are labeled with the acronym DECT which stand for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications. Do not be confused if you see DECT at the 6.0 the device uses 1.9 gigahertz. Even though we say 1.9 gigahertz that is actually means between 1.92 gigahertz and 1.93 gigahertz which gives the monitor a lot of frequencies to choose from these range.
A DECT monitor determines if certain fr
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